OMAHA, Neb. — When Matt Senk took over as the baseball coach at Stony Brook, it wasn’t even a full-time gig. Now, there is no one in the country doing a better job.

Having led the Seawolves to a nation-best 52 wins and their first College World Series appearance in his 22nd year at the helm, Senk was named the 2012 National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Coach of the Year yesterday.

Senk becomes the first America East coach to earn the national honor, already having claimed the conference’s coach of the year award the past two years.

“It’s such a tremendous honor,” Senk said at a press conference yesterday morning. “Stony Brook has been a huge part of my life. There’s no better place in the world where I’d like to be.”

With the best winning percentage (.803) in the nation over the past two seasons heading into last night’s College World Series opener against UCLA, Senk has also helped Stony Brook become the first Northeast team to appear in the College World Series since Maine in 1986 and the first from New York since St. John’s in 1980.

After coaching three years at Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, Senk ventured east to Stony Brook in 1991, inheriting a Division III team with no history and no reason to expect anything more. The job wasn’t even full-time, so Senk supplemented his salary by teaching physical education classes and running baseball camps.

Senk, who told Director of Athletics Jim Fiore that he was recognized on the streets of Baton Rouge at last week’s Super Regional against LSU more times than in two decades in Suffolk County, steadily put together a program built on fundamentals that has led to winning seasons in 18 of the last 22 years.

Senk helped transition the program from Division III to Division I, transforming a Model T into a Ferrari. He has guided the Seawolves to four NCAA Regionals (2004, 2008, 2010, 2012) and is the school’s all-time leaders in wins. Senk holds a career record of 621-388-3 (.615).

“I want to thank all my players over the 22 years who made me look good and made me look like I knew what I was doing,” Senk said. “It always comes back to the players. We’ve always tried to get the absolute best players we could. Even when we were Division III, we were getting players that could play at higher levels. That’s really why we’ve been successful.”